Tim Grobaty: 7 wonders of Long Beach lost to time

ANCIENT WONDERS: The first columnists to compile Seven Wonders lists were the historian Herodotus, around 430 years before Christ, and his junior colleague Callimachus of Cyrene, who blundered into the list-making business a couple hundred years later.

Obviously, with the benefit of centuries of progress and increasingly wondrous wonders, our list, which we've assembled with the suggestions of our 21st-century readers, is better than the ancient guys' Top Seven which, because of the dearth of wonders in those days, is peppered with such wobbly constructions as the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

You can track progress through subsequent lists as new wonders came along: The Great Wall of China, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge.

When we asked readers for nominations for a modern Seven Wonders of Long Beach, we received more than 50 different nominations, and after tallying the vote, we have come up with the Seven Modern Wonders of Long Beach, which we'll divulge on Wednesday.

Several readers contributed - unsolicited, but we like a reader who goes the extra mile - suggestions for wonders that have ceased to exist, enabling us to present The Seven Wonders of Ancient Long Beach.

1. The Pike: Long Beach was once, more than anything else, a tourist town, and the Pike, which began rather simply in 1902, was the town's main attraction, especially through the 1930s on into the 1950s. Stretching along downtown's waterfront, it included spectacular rollercoasters and other rides, several theaters, penny arcades, bathhouses, a saltwater plunge, restaurants and other diversions. It was demolished in 1979.

2. The Municipal Auditorium: Built in 1932, the Muni played host to hundreds of major conventions, symphony performances, rock concerts and beauty pageants. It was razed in 1975 to make room for the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.

3. The Rainbow Pier: A breakwater was needed to protect the older (pre-1932) Municipal Auditorium. In a time when designers and planners used their heads, the Rainbow Pier was built for that purpose, but they also through a road on top of the long, arcing pier that ran from Pine Avenue to Linden Avenue, which made for the best of Sunday drives and strolls. The lagoon inside the pier was slowly filled in beginning in the 1940s.

4. The Cyclone Racer: The Pike had a number of cool coasters, including the original Pike thrill ride, Bisby's Spiral Airship, and the 1915-1930 Jackrabbit Racer. But the Cyclone Racer, built in 1930 to replace the Jackrabbit, was the most thrilling of them all. It ran until it was torn down in 1968.

5. Balboa Studios: Long Beach was Hollywood before Hollywood ever thought about being Hollywood. In the early days of the 20th century, Balboa, which sprawled over 11 acres from its main buildings at Alamitos Avenue and Sixth Street, with additional land in Signal Hill for Westerns, produced hundreds of silent films, featuring some of the biggest names in the industry, including Fatty Arbuckle and Harold Lloyd. A fatal combination of a variety of factors, not the least of which were World War I, the influenza epidemic and the discovery of oil in 1921 on Signal Hill, combined to ruin Balboa, which was closed in 1923 and demolished in 1925.

6. Minnie the Whale: Minnie was Long Beach's first tourist draw. She was dragged in out of the surf in May 1897. She drew huge crowds for several days, the number dwindling a bit as decomposition began lessening the attraction. Her bones were bleached and dried and the skeleton was put on display at Pacific (later Lincoln) Park. Minnie more or less toured the town. When the skeleton had to be moved to make way for a new library, she moved to a display in the Sun Parlor on the Pine Avenue Pier in 1920. When that pier was damaged in a storm in 1934, Minnie moved near calmer waters to the Colorado Lagoon, where she stayed until people's amusement needs grew too sophisticated. The bones were moved into storage at the airport and, later (and somewhat sinisterly) buried in a field, where they were discovered by a couple of kids in the 1960s. Today, the bones are at Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History's marine research center in Vernon.

7. The Pontoon Bridge: Before the Gerald Desmond Bridge was built in 1968, people crossed the Cerritos Channel in the Port of Long Beach on a retractable pontoon bridge, which was built by the Navy in 1944 to allow (relatively) quick access between Terminal Island from Long Beach. Nostalgia has softened the road rage that once attended the sometimes long waits in traffic as motorists had to wait for sluggish craft to pass before the bridge was reopened.